


fifty million feet of earth

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-05 00:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17314664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The last two years.





	fifty million feet of earth

In October, as he was arranging tea and toast on her desk--they had brought it into the bedroom two years ago, and set it beneath the window so she could get sunlight on days when she did not go out--she said, from the bed, "Hold this."

"This" was her hair, or most of it. As her joints started ache more and more, it was harder for her to put it up, to brush it out. Scorpius sometimes would do it for her, but he'd left for school six weeks ago, and Draco wasn't not quite as good at it. He didn't dig the brush in, and it took him at least twice as long. His hands shook like he was the one with a wasting disease. 

He gathered up her hair, and she held her wand out, he thought for a braiding charm, but instead she said, "Scindo," and suddenly most of his wife's hair was hanging limply from his hands.

"Astoria?" he asked, uncertain what do to with the foot or more of glossy black hair trailing on the bedsheets. He remembers how she was at school, how as a first-year she'd seemed more hair than girl. 

"It was getting heavy," she said, although he knew that she'd rarely worn her hair shorter than waist length, and that what she meant was that she was getting weaker. "It's such a relief, like this. So light. How do I look?"

"Beautiful," he said, and kissed the top of her head. 

-

Scorpius's face fell when he looked around King's Cross and saw that Draco was there unaccompanied. He hid it quickly, but not quick enough to escape Draco's notice. 

He was currently with the Potters--well, Mrs. Potter, who was arguing with her eldest and sounded exasperated. The middle child, Albus, adjusted his glasses and peered in the direction that Scorpius was looking. 

Draco supposed there was nothing for it. He didn't have to wade his way through the crowd: it parted for him. Not entirely in response to his notoriety, but there was a way his father taught him to walk, when he was younger, full of self-importance, and Draco could summon it at will, and usually did, when he was around other witches and wizards. He was fairly sure Lucius Malfoy never needed to fake the arrogance.

"Ginevra?" he asked. 

She turned. "Oh," she said, "Malfoy, hi."

They could manage civil and coolly polite easily--and her son, James of the "leave your brother alone, James," fell silent to gawk at a real live Death Eater, so possibly she was grateful for that--and he returned the greeting with an "Hello. I saw Scorpius was with you."

"Yes, he and Albus are inseparable." She sounded wry, but also relieved, almost happy. She'd better be: it was no small honor to be befriended by a Malfoy. 

"I'm not surprised, from what I've heard." And he had heard, quite a lot. And he'd seen them together before, when visiting Scorpius. They had the sort of friendship he'd always wanted for himself as a boy, always envied, but when it was his son he didn't envy it at all. Scorpius deserved it. And he wouldn't admit it to anyone but Astoria, but he was relieved it was Potter's son Scorpius had become friends with, because Scorpius had been a little lonely, at home, and the quickest way to make friends in Slytherin was to fall back on pureblood prejudice, and the last thing he wanted was for Scorpius to get drawn into that. 

"I'm glad they're friends," said Ginevra, and he had the sneaking suspicion Potter's child wasn't writing back quite as often or as effusively as Scorpius was, and deeply annoyed about it, about Potter's wife having to say she was glad they were friends--as opposed to being angry, as opposed to Potter not being glad. He told himself not to read too much into it: knowing Potter, it was probably a matter of Albus Severus being made to feel ashamed he was in Slytherin. Scorpius said the older boy teased him about that. 

"Yes," Draco agreed. "But I'll take him off your hands now; his mother misses him."

"How is Astoria?"

He was already getting tired of that question. He forgot the two knew each other--something to do with the _Prophet_ , Ginevra's reporting, Astoria's work, when she could work. But he was getting tired of it because he didn't like the real answer. "She's been better. Scorpius," he said, raising his voice. Calling his son he sounds like his father. 

Scorpius gave Albus a sort of a wave and a nod. "I'll write," he said. 

"You can floo," said Albus. "I can floo--"

"Yeah," said Scorpius enthusiastically. Draco knew he'd have to say no, later, or at least impose conditions: not when your mother is resting. Guests might disturb her. You have all year with Albus: who knows how long you'll have left--

He couldn't finish that thought. 

He wasn't sure he'd have to when they got home and Scorpius gasped at Astoria's hair. She bent down gingerly to give him a hug, and Draco could see his son refraining from using the force he'd like to in returning it. "Good first term?" she asked, and that was all it took: Scorpius was talking, and talking, and talking. They moved to the drawing room, and Draco, who'd heard some of it on the walk up the drive, brought in hot chocolate and pastries. Astoria hadn't been eating enough recently, and so he'd been trying to get her to keep her weight up by taking advantage of her sweet tooth. She nibbled absent-mindedly at a bun while Scorpius devoured half the tray, but she did drink three cups of hot chocolate. 

Scorpius was in raptures over Hogwarts, as though neither of his parents had gone to school there, as though they didn't know about the moving staircases, the secret passageways, the ghosts. The classes--Scorpius begged them to take him to Flourish and Blotts over the holidays so he could get extra reading material, Irma Pince had imposed a limit on the number of books he could borrow at a time, which was entirely unfair. The flying--he was quite good in the lessons. And Albus Severus Potter. 

Draco could tell--he's sure Astoria could too--that sometimes when Scorpius broke off in the middle of a story, it was because the other students were cruel to them in that part. That they were being teased, or gawked at. He was disappointed that Scorpius wasn't bringing this to him, so he could go to Minerva and get the other students expelled, but he was also relieved that Scorpius was hiding it, or trying to, from Astoria, who should be happy for as long as she could. And then it hurt, it hurt so much that this was something that Scorpius felt he had to do. He was only eleven. It was too young--but at what age would it not be too young? Draco had seen his own father, aged not only by Azkaban but by the strain of not being able to keep his wife and son safe, and now he understood why that seemed to have added twenty years to Lucius in the space of two. 

-

The holidays were quiet. Not that life had ever been particularly eventful before Scorpius had gone to Hogwarts, but the added excitement, if it could be called that, of Albus's occasional floo calls and owls, was offset by Astoria's sickness. She slept until after the sun had risen, took hot chocolate or tea with as much cream and sugar as Draco could put into it, and they talked, or they read. Draco and Scorpius went out flying sometimes, like they had when Scorpius was younger, and it felt good to be on a broom and in the wind again. Apparently Albus Severus hadn't inherited any of his father's Quidditch skills--Draco knew it was mean to be pleased by this, to be pleased that his son was better than Potter's at the one thing he could never beat Potter at--and didn't like to fly, and Scorpius didn't want to do it on his own, so he'd been missing this too. 

They dragged a big tree inside for Christmas and decorated it, all three of them. Astoria dusted the branches with snow; Scorpius floated little lights among the needles. He left a wreck of wrapping paper underneath it Christmas morning, and a pile of presents that even Draco's parents might have said was overdoing it (although they sent half a dozen: dragonskin gloves and boots, the newest Firebolt, a Slytherin's scarf, and sweets), and Astoria, up early for once, laughed at the excess, and then was so excited over the rare book Scorpius had hunted down for her that she nearly spilled her cocoa over it. 

And then it was time to visit with the rest of the family. 

Astoria seemed well enough, which was why he was surprised when she tucked her hand into his elbow as he prepared to Side-Along Apparate Scorpius. Scorpius looked at her too. 

"It's going to be a long day," she said, and even if that weren't true, just being around either set of parents made one hour feel like five. "I'd rather not tire myself out needlessly."

Draco knew the progression, knew that the curse was tied to the cursed's magic. It manifested around the time a child first started using magic, and towards the end, inhibited their ability to use magic--although pain did that well enough on its own. Pain, and fatigue, and the curse caused enough of both. But he didn't say anything, and took her along. He couldn't remember the last time she Apparated anywhere, now that he thought about it. They didn't really leave the house much, these days. They'd taken a car to King's Cross in September--Astoria loved them, but could no longer drive the one he bought her, all those years ago--and before that, it was Passover with Astoria's parents, and before _that_ , Christmas last year. 

When they arrived at the foot of the path leading up to the Greengrasses' home Astoria clutched his arm harder and shivered. They hadn't gone that far north, but the wind seemed colder here, the snow thicker. "I hope they have a fire going," she said. 

"I can set one," said Scorpius. "We learned how, in school."

"That won't be necessary." Fire, and school. "There's smoke, coming out of the chimney."

Scorpius dashed ahead. He always looked forward to these visits: he wasn't particularly close to Astoria's family, but he played chess and Exploding Snap with Daphne's children. He used to win, and was accused of cheating; now Draco suspected he lost on purpose most of the time. Draco and Astoria were barely halfway up the path when he was back. "No one answered when I knocked."

"They must still be at church," said Astoria. Draco refrained from saying about his in-laws and church: it was a snobby, social thing that certain families did, like the Notts or the Boneses or the Potters a century ago, a way of gathering in plain sight of the Muggles, mostly to gossip but occasionally to negotiate and present a unified front in the Wizengamot. Of course, the Greengrasses had also gone to hide from Muggle anti-Semites, but they didn't have to make such a production of it, Father always said. The Malfoys didn't belong to any church. They had a chapel in the Manor, from back when they were trusted advisors to the crown, and Draco had spent some time hopping over the pews and making faces at the stained glass windows and setting off the charm that switches it from Anglican to Catholic and back to Anglican as a child. "Ernie's family will be there too."

"They could invite them up," huffed Draco, although of course he didn't mean it, then. He didn't want to be subjected to a gaggle of Hufflepuffs, he just liked criticizing his in-laws. They never passed up the opportunity to do the same to him, and he hadn't become that much of a better person. 

They got to the door, where Scorpius was hopping from one foot to the other under his traveling cloak, and Astoria dug into her own cloak for her wand, aimed it at the door, and said, teeth chattering with cold, "Alohomora!"

Nothing happened. He could see Scorpius's face fall--they hadn't told him too much about the progression of the disease, but he was a bright child with access to several large libraries--although it could be passed off as an effect of the cold. 

"Let me try, mum," said Scorpius, and drew his own wand. "Alohomora!" 

The door still did not open, and Draco said, trying not to clench his teeth, trying to hide his fury, and surprising himself by how well he managed it, "Not all spells work on the first try." He clapped Scorpius's shoulder, inwardly fuming at his parents-in-law. He was quite sure they'd keyed the lock to Ernest Junior already, maybe even to Ernest Senior, despite him not being of the Greengrass blood. But to exclude his son--his son, who was worth more than all the Macmillans in the world--they would be hearing about this. "You can show us your fire-starting one."

Scorpius looked dubious. "I think I'd end up setting the house on fire."

Astoria elbowed him before he could say anything. They were quite bony, her elbows. She smiled. "I'm sure they won't be long."

Scorpius didn't ask why not send them a Patronus. He wasn't as easily fooled as Draco was at that age. 

"I know another fire spell." Draco took out his own wand, rolled it between his fingers. A murmured charm and he had a glass jar in his left hand-- "you'll have to get the jars from the kitchens," he told Scorpius, "transfiguring air into anything isn't something you'll learn for a few more years. But once you have a jar, you do this--and say 'Flammula,' and--". The jar was filled with flickering blue flames, which Draco extinguished. "Now you try."

"Flammula," repeated Scorpius, and the flames sprang back to life, and he beamed. 

"It was quite popular, when I was at school." Astoria accepted the jar from Scorpius and cradled it close. Draco transfigured up a bench, and they arranged themselves on it. "This was before they taught us warming charms, because who needs warming charms in the middle of winter in the north of Scotland--". He stopped. "Regardless, one of the students worked this out, and it spread like, well, fire." He could have told Scorpius exactly which student--Astoria, being a few years beneath them, might not have noticed, or known--but he didn't. He was copying Hermione Granger again, although he supposed if you had to copy someone, the witch who grew up to be the youngest Minister of Magic ever wasn't the worst choice, not that he'd ever admit it. 

Any other time, Draco would have been more than happy to wait for his in-laws, but now he was impatient for them to arrive. The flame seemed to help Astoria a little, as did the warmth of him and Scorpius to either side of her, but she still should not have been out in this weather. He was almost about to suggest they Apparate to the Manor, where she'd be able to get warm, and see the Greengrasses on Boxing Day, when finally he could hear voices, and boots crunching on snow, and Hestia and Hercule came running up to them, chased by their older brother, levitating snowballs, their parents, and their grandparents. Penelope took one look at Astoria and knocked Ernest's snowballs to the ground before one could hit her, and Hyperion opened the door. 

-

On Boxing Day, Astoria started sneezing. 

-

The cold settled into her lungs and nested there like an Occamy, until it didn't seem like she had any room left for air. Thankfully its progression was slow enough--due in part to the Healer's visits and spells, and Draco's potions--that Scorpius was back at Hogwarts before it got truly bad, before her cough sounded like it was breaking her bones, before it started bursting capillaries. Her Healer, Waller, took up residence in one of the guest rooms, and Draco conjured up a workspace for him in his lab. After years spent only in the company of his family, he found it hard to adjust to Waller's presence. It helped a little that Waller was a first year during Draco's seventh, and that Draco's past didn't mean much to him, and that he was a mostly quiet and serious young man, but it was still difficult to come down to his lab and find the man hunched over a roll of parchment, cross-referencing books, and idly eating a sandwich. ("You should talk to him," croaked Astoria, one evening after Waller drew her blood for another test. "You treat him like a servant." But he couldn't. Waller was here because his wife was dying, and it would be too easy for Draco to say she was dying because he couldn't cure her. It wouldn't be kind, and it wouldn't be true. And yet, one other night, long after Astoria had gone to bed, as she grew better with the warmer weather and barely coughed at all, Draco brought up the subject of the philosopher's stone--of storied artifacts in general, that he knew some were real, so why not others, and might any of them--?

Waller straightened his glasses, awkwardly, and put out a hand and said, "Mr Malfoy." He cleared his throat. "Mr Malfoy, when I look at her ancestors at this stage in the disease, they were dead by March. Not walking around and owl-ordering half a shop of sweets for their son's twelfth birthday. There is... I'm not sure any of those artifacts could improve on that."

Draco didn't agree, but he didn't argue. "If she relapses--"

"Send me an owl," Waller said.

"I will," said Draco, and then realized, for the first time since Waller moved into their spare room, how odd this was. When his grandfather was ill wth Dragon Pox, no Healers stayed at the Manor--although that was partly because Abraxas had let it go too long before Lucius had called in medical help for him, over his objections: Draco still remembered listening, on the stairs, to his father being berated for being weak, for begging for help from servants--and it wasn't a service St. Mungo's offered, most witches and wizards stayed in the long-term wing, or the hospice-- "I don't know how to thank you," he began, only to have Waller shake his head. 

"I'm glad to have done what I could," said Waller.

"Yes, but your other patients--"

Waller smiled. "The amount of money your family has given to St. Mungo's over the years, I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't expected their own personal Healer in return."

"It's an important institution," said Draco stiffly, although it was the kind of thing Lucius would do, throw money at the hospital so no Malfoy died early as Abraxas had, "and we do feel terribly about the damage done in the war." Draco did, at any rate. 

Waller gave him a look. "You do know about the endowment your parents gave, sixteen years ago?"

Draco did not. Waller told him how much it was--and even for Draco, who'd never had to worry about money, who was so used to the size of the Malfoy vault and the amount of gold in it that it took years for him to realize that his family was filthy rich, it was enough to make him blink. "So you see, the annual return on that could pay my salary ten times over."

"I had no idea." Sixteen years ago, he thought. An unannounced wedding present to him and Astoria, so that when she fell ill, she'd have the best Healers money could buy--

No, he thought. They didn't do it for Astoria. They did it in case she passed the curse on to Scorpius, onto any child she bore, or their children, or their children. He ran a hand over his mouth, half-tempted to Apparate home and yell at his father, his mother, but he was tired. And they, in their way, meant well. 

"Thank you all the same," he said, and shook Waller's hand. 

-

On his birthday, Astoria had catered a dinner from one of Diagon Alley's most exclusive restaurants, just for the two of them. She wore her hair--and there was more gray in it, he realized suddenly, far more gray than black--swept up, and the windows were left open to the mild summer air, though he could sense the warming charm around her necklace, her bracelets. After they ate, she flicked her wand at the phonograph, and held out one hand. 

"Dance with me?" she asked. 

He didn't ask her if she was sure it wouldn't tire her out. He knew how much she slept, knew the potions she took to make the pain in her joints bearable, knew they're doing less and less. But he also knew that as she saved her strength up last fall for Scorpius's visit, she'd been saving it up for this, too. And he didn't want to make her say it: that she might be tired, but she wanted to dance while she still could. 

They made it through the entire phonograph, moving slowly, sometimes just swaying in place. She tucked her head against his shoulder. She hadn't regained even half of the weight she lost over the winter, and she seemed feather light in his arms, almost insubstantial. Almost as if she was already gone. 

After the record played out, they sat side by side and drank eighty-year-old Bordeaux. She rested her head on his shoulder again, and they were silent for a time. 

"Draco," she said, finally. "Waller told me you were talking about fairy tales."

"That was once," he said, more annoyed that they were talking about the curse, the only cure to which might be mythical, as there was so far no such thing as a medical one, than that Waller told her. "And what happened to confidentiality?"

"You're not his patient." She swirled the wine in its glass. "Do you remember what I first told you when we met?"

"We had this compartment first, so find your own? Aren't you supposed to be a prefect? My sister doesn't actually think any of your jokes are funny, she just laughs so Pansy Parkinson will leave her alone?"

She gave him a very level look. In her thinner face, her eyes seemed bigger, ringed with darkness. 

"Yes," he said. "I didn't mean that I was going to drop everything and scour France for the Philosopher's Stone. I only...." He'd had one very powerful mythical artifact once, and it had been utterly useless. "I spent a lot of time when I was younger wishing for things I never got. It's not an easy habit to break."

She traced his cheek. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry. But it was always going to be like this, in the end." She smiled. "But even in the end, it's not bad. And what came before--I couldn't have asked for anything more."

Draco thought she could have asked for a cure to be miraculously discovered about five years ago. Or even five months ago, or five minutes ago. But he knew what she means. If they didn't have much time left, they shouldn't spend it arguing. 

-

He remembered the first time he met her--really met her, not as a third-year who'd dropped her books on Goyle's little brother's head, or as just another an applicant for the Slytherin Quidditch team--because what he remembered of his sixth and seventh years, he remembered with nightmarish clarity. He'd come across her, helping Lovegood free one of the Muggleborns the Carrows kept for curse practice, and he'd--well, he'd waited until they were done, and then he'd cleared his throat, and told Lovegood to report to Flitwick for detention, and then he'd turned to Astoria, who'd never hexed him, who'd never befriended Potter, who was the little sister of someone he'd known since he was eleven, and who looked much smaller, and more fragile, than fifteen years. He was Head Boy, and a Death Eater. At the very least he should have sent her to Snape or Slughorn.

He didn't. He said, "Don't do that again."

"Why shouldn't I?" She hadn't been too impressed with him beforehand, and he didn't blame her. He wasn't particularly impressed with himself. He'd spent a lot of time wishing he'd made different choices, and would spend even more time on that before the school year was out. 

He glanced down at her, feeling tired, feeling old. Some days, getting out of bed, he felt like he imagined Dumbledore must have, that last night. "Because next time it might not be me who catches you. Next time it might be--someone whose idea of punishment is a little more immediate than sending you off to a professor who will assign lines. The--the things, they do--"

"I'm not scared of them," Astoria said scornfully.

"You should be," he said. "They could kill you. It wouldn't mean anything to them, they would just--"

She shook her head. "I know that, I'm not stupid. But I'm not scared of dying."

He looked at her. Her small chin was held high, her fists clenched. "You--"

"One of my ancestors was cursed," she continued. She held his gaze like a Legilimens. "It pops up now and then in the bloodline, and it popped up in me." He kept staring at her, uncomprehending. "Since I was eight, I've known I'm probably not going to make it past forty. I will die. I will die early. So if the Carrows kill me, it's a little earlier than it would have been, but it's not like they're doing me that much of a disservice."

"And what about your sister?" he asked. He barely knew Daphne except that she really liked Herbology and didn't think his jokes are funny, but he was fairly sure she wasn't the type to be okay with her little sister getting murdered. 

"What?"

"What about your sister, isn't it a disservice to her?" he asked. "What about your parents?"

"That's none of your business," she snapped, and wrenched her arm out of his hand and ran off.

-

When Scorpius floo'd on his birthday--the twenty-first, the longest day of the year, the kind of omen Draco always said he didn't believe in but secretly relished: his son had been born on a day full of light--spilling over with thanks for the sweets and the books, he actually whooped with delight when Astoria knelt down on the floor next to Draco. 

"Mum!"

"I told you I was doing better," she said. "Is that so hard to believe?"

"It's one thing, in a letter," said Scorpius. "You don't get the contrast in a letter."

"You want contrast," murmured Astoria, "I was actually thinking of shaving this all off," and she lifted a hand to her hair. It'd grown out a little in her sickness, the gray more pronounced. "I'll look like a character in one of those Muggle scifi films."

She would look, Draco thought but did not say, like a cancer patient in one of those silly Muggle films where they made a big deal out of cancer, like they had trouble curing it or something. And then it hit him, and when she'd gone to bed he dashed off a note to Waller about potential Muggle cures. ("Maybe a little less grasping at straws than the Philosopher's Stone," as he put it.)

Waller, by return owl, informed him they tried Muggle cures, three years ago. Draco crumpled up the parchment and tossed it into the fire. 

-

On the thirtieth of June she convinced him to cut the rest of her hair short. "I did tell Scorpius I would."

As a joke, he did not say. He wondered what bothered her more: the weight of her hair or the gray in it. She'd grown up knowing she'd never get old, so maybe it was difficult to resign herself to these signs of age. 

She stretched in the sunlight and smiled at him. Her skin looked lucid, almost transparent. 

He didn't say no. How could he? He knew she was in pain, he knew that she didn't like to discuss it, he knew that this was one little thing he could do for her to ease that pain. He gathered her hair and went bunch by bunch until her skull was almost shorn, and then he ran his wand over that, to smooth it all out. When he was done there was barely enough to brush his lips as he kissed the top of her head, gently. 

"Don't," she said, tugging on his wrist. Her eyes were bright with tears. "Vanish these, before the house elves make a fetish out of them." She forced a laugh. "You should see what Narkers did with my great-grandmother's dentures, it scarred me for life."

"I should hope Dipsy isn't quite as bad as that," said Draco, but Vanished the hair anyway. 

"I'm not taking any chances. Scorpius doesn't need anything like that haunting his dreams." Left unsaid was what would haunt Scorpius's dreams, what already haunted Scorpius's dreams. Draco's childhood had in many ways been luckier than most: he'd had the odd nightmare that his parents had taken him to some function and left him there, and he'd wander the halls of the Ministry or a museum calling for them until he woke up crying. Sometimes he'd have nightmares of being blown off course while flying and not being able to find his way home. He'd had a greater variety of nightmares once he'd started at Hogwarts, but then the Dark Lord had come, and they'd all reverted back to the same old theme: losing his family. "So," she said, and arched her neck, "what do you think?"

"Stylish," said Draco. "Beautiful." And she was, even having lost too much weight, even with the shadows under her eyes. 

She reached out to take his hand, and he could feel her joints were stiff, her fingers bony, but strong, and he would hold on as long as he could.

-

The summer went well. Scorpius gaped at the new haircut, but the contrast between Astoria as she was now--walking, if a little slowly, sitting in the grass and reading, stealing pieces of Draco's dessert and teasing him about his waistline (which was absolutely unfair; if anything, he'd lost weight, so caught up in her illness that he forgot to eat)--and as she'd been six months ago, when he'd last seen her bedridden and wracked by coughs, was such that the hair seemed to reinforce the impression of her health, rather than undermine it. 

She was still taking potions to relieve the pain at night, and sleeping nine or ten hours a day. She still couldn't move very fast or very far, or do much magic. But she didn't try to go beyond these limitations, and the warm weather, the sun (which does not shine so strongly on the Muggle properties a mile away), the mountains of sweets bought for Scorpius and Astoria's own determination all make for two very, very good months. 

They would have been better if Draco hadn't known they couldn't last. He wasn't a Seer, but he knew. Everyone had been telling him to prepare for it--for half his life, even, before he knew she'd be, well, half his life--and he couldn't keep deluding himself, keep it separated as he has so many things, into this is Astoria and i love her, and this is Astoria and she is going to die. It was the improvement in her health that actually convinced him. It was the way she managed those two months to give Scorpius good memories. It was in the shadow of her smile. 

In September the cough came back. 

-

Waller returned and there was no talk of miracle cures. "At least I have my own potions department," he told Draco grimly. "You're better at this than half the St. Mungo's staff."

But Draco didn't take it as a compliment: he could have been better than all of them, and it wouldn't matter if he were still failing Astoria. He would hit on a new formula to soothe the cough, to alleviate the pain, and it would work for a week until it didn't. She lost weight fast, too fast. She had no appetite. He started dosing her pain potions with honey, quite a lot of honey, and she didn't even seem to taste it. 

One day he was bringing her a tray of soup and dropped it when he heard her whimpering in pain. He rushed towards their room to find Waller there, lecturing her as lifted first one arm, then the other. 

"Of course it hurts," Waller was saying, "you went three months without doing any of the muscle-strengthening exercises we practiced, and so atrophy set in. There aren't charms for everything, why didn't you do them?"

"Because they fucking hurt," Astoria hurled back, her teeth gritted with pain as she tried to swing a fist at Waller's head. For a second the anger almost made her a different person, almost unrecognizable to Draco, in a way the pain and illness never had. 

"Yes," said Waller, catching her fist, and the terrible grimace was replaced by a open-mouthed gasp of pain, "it hurts a little when you do them, so that it's not agony when you use those muscles for anything else. If you'd actually managed to land that blow, it would have hurt you more than me."

"Of course it would have." Astoria was leaning back on the pillows, cradling her wrist, her breathing ragged. "What doesn't hurt me more than it hurts anything else?"

Draco backed out of the room to repair the tray and the bowl, to get more soup.

-

She wanted to do Christmas again this year, but not at her parents'. Scorpius, back home from Hogwarts, kept insisting that it was okay if they stayed home, that he didn't want to get caught in the snow again, and he wasn't looking at his mother as he said this, but at Draco, a mute plea on his face as though Draco could do something, do anything. 

For the third time, Astoria looked different when Scorpius returned from school than when he left for it, but it was much more than a haircut this time. She was skeletal, the shape of her skull painfully obviously without her hair, her eyes shadowed from lack of sleep, her cheeks hollow. Her eyes were permanently bloodshot, the whites pink, or red, more often than not. When she smiled, her teeth seemed larger, whiter. 

She slept less and less, though she was in bed most of the day. The cough wouldn't leave her alone, filled the bed with tremors. Her body spasmed. She'd kicked Draco out of the room on the premise that when she finally did manage to sleep, she didn't want to be woken up by his snores, but he knew that she was trying to make things easier on him, as her insistence on going to his parents' for Christmas was a way of making things a little more normal for Scorpius, and for him as well.

Besides, he didn't snore. 

"Can't you--" 

"Tell her I don't want to see my parents and you don't want to see your grandparents?" Draco asked, and Scorpius shook his head. "I've tried asking her to do--or not do--things for the sake of her health before. I haven't had any more success than you."

His son looked so young. Too young to be dealing with this, too young to already be less of a child than Draco was at that age--there had been nothing serious, really serious, for Draco until he was sixteen and his father had gone to Azkaban, and even then he'd been a child, ignorant and petulant and going on and on about how Dumbledore was the worst, and there was nothing special about Harry Potter to the Dark Lord who was smiling not out of indulgence, but because he knew Draco wasn't going to survive, he knew he was sending Draco to his death. He normally would never wish that his son share any of his childhood experiences, but being twelve and having one's worst problem being Quidditch was the exception. Draco reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, hearing his own father's voice in the back of his mind asking wasn't the boy a little too old for hugs. "I'll bully her into dressing up warmly, and we'll leave early," he promised. "Besides, there's always a lot of fire and light at the Manor. Your grandfather likes it that way."

"I wish," said Scorpius, and didn't need to finish his sentence. 

Christmas was a disaster. Once more he side-Apparated Scorpius and Astoria, and Scorpius opened the doors for them--he'd had access to the wards here since he was born--and Draco was unbundling Astoria from her heavier cloak and scarf when his parents met them in the entry. Astoria half-turned to greet them and Draco could hear his father's half-choked wheeze. 

"Hello, Lucius," rasped Astoria, shaking back her hood. "I didn't think I looked that bad."

"No." His father was trying to compose himself, Draco could tell, but he couldn't stop staring at Astoria or hide his shock. 

"We weren't expecting you so early," said Mother, gliding in. She murmured something to Father, kissed both Draco and Astoria on the cheek, then zeroed in on Scorpius. In the beginning, she hadn't been terribly demonstrative towards him, but Father had said it was a Black family tradition, the children were raised by house elves until they were six or seven, so the parents could avoid the risk of becoming attached to a Squib--which certainly explained a lot about Draco's own childhood--but Draco couldn't help thinking that it also let Mother avoid getting attached to Scorpius in case he inherited Astoria's curse. He had never brought it up with her, any more than he was going to broach the subject of the donation to St. Mungo's with his father. He knew what kind of people his parents were, and he supposed that it was enough that they loved him, and Scorpius, enough to behave themselves around Astoria, enough to have stayed out of pureblood politics since the end of the war. It was more than he had growing up. 

"Yes," muttered Father. "It was something of a surprise." He couldn't seem to keep his gaze on Astoria: his eyes darted back to Draco, and there was a question there, a what do you think you're doing? Later, after lunch, he took Draco aside to his study. There were more artifacts on the shelves than before, and not all of them were strictly legal. Beautiful, but not strictly legal. 

"Draco," he said, "do you have any idea--"

"She's dying," he said. "She's dying, Father, so for once, spare me the lecture."

His father lowered himself into one of the armchairs; after a second, Draco did too. He knew he wasn't not going to be spared a lecture, and was tempted to walk out, but that wasn't a threat he'd ever followed through on.

"You know," said Father, "we didn't object to her politics, not really. It was her health--"

"You can rest easy," Draco snapped. "Scorpius has no trace of the curse, so the precious Malfoy family line--"

"Draco," Father said. He sounded as tired as Draco felt. "We knew her early death would devastate you."

He would have preferred the lecture to this. Even to his father reaching out to touch his hand in an awkward, uncomforting manner.

-

The exertion cost Astoria, and she spent the week after asleep, the week after that in bed. "Stupid of me," she said. 

"You don't even like my parents," he said lightly. Waller'd already snapped and lectured her. She'd kept looking at Draco, who'd stood back, ashamed because she couldn't have gone and done this to herself if he hadn't agreed to Apparate her, and after Waller had swept from the room in a way reminiscent of Professor Snape, Astoria had asked Draco when he'd been planning to step in, and Draco, doubly embarrassed, had snapped back that _now_ she wanted him to treat Waller like a servant?

Scorpius went back to school, but preoccupied: chewing on his lip, clutching at Draco's hand, and staring out the window as the train left the station. Draco had sent a letter every day informing him that Astoria is improving, slowly but surely, but it was not that heartening: anything was an improvement from borderline catatonic. 

He sighed and reached for her hand. It seemed much smaller now, and he held it loosely, because her joints still hurt, and her skin had begun to bruise frightfully easily. "Speaking of, you should--you should talk to yours."

She frowned.

"Not now," he said, "and not by letters, or the floo." He swallowed, couldn't believe he was about to say this. "Invite them here, when you feel up to it. We have the space. Talk to them."

Her frown got deeper, and he wasn't expecting it when she capitulated. "Oh, all right. But when I do, you can't be here." She squeezed his hand, even though it must be agony. "If you're here, I won't be able to talk to them, and not just because they'll want to spend it arguing about you. You have to promise me you won't be here when they come, and that you won't return until after they've left."

"If that's your condition." It would be easy for her to not have the Greengrasses over, to not have the conversations she needed to have with her parents and her sister, and claim she had; short of interrogating Stepsy or Waller, he'd never know. But that was part of loving people: one never truly knew, one had to trust, and he could trust Astoria. "I'll visit Scorpius, tell him you wanted me out of your hair for a few days."

She snorted as he traced her scalp. "I don't miss it, you know. I wish I'd done it sooner. My parents would have had a fit, but it would have been worth it."

"Story of our lives," said Draco. 

-

He tried not to sneer at the inn and mostly succeeded. It was too dark to see most of the grime anyway, so presumably it was too dark to see his facial expression. He would tell Astoria all about it, exaggerating the squalor, even though he was planning on casting cleaning charms on his room, on spending most of the time at Hogwarts. He imagined she'd laugh at it, and that if he made it sound horrid enough she wouldn't feel bad that she couldn't go anywhere herself. 

The barman squinted at him for a long, uncomfortable minute, and he wondered if maybe his facial expression was too visible anyway. 

"You're Draco Malfoy," the man grunted finally. He was an old man, with a long beard and long hair, both the dirty white color of bone. 

"Yes," said Draco, "so I can't very well stay at the Three Broomsticks, can I?" 

And then it struck him: the glasses, the nose, the hair. He'd read the life and lies of Albus Dumbledore, everybody had, and he remembered the pictures of the two boys. He'd been vaguely aware that Aberforth Dumbledore had been involved in the war somehow, but hadn't expected to find him tending bar like some kind of servant. 

This was infinitely more awkward. 

Aberforth snorted, and took down a couple of glasses. "You'd be an only child, then," he said. 

Draco accepted the glass numbly. "I'm not--". He put his trunk on the ground. He knew better than to complain about the grime when he'd nearly killed this man's brother. "I apologize. If I'd known--"

Aberforth snorted. Even though the two brothers had looked the same in the photographs, Draco couldn't look at him and see what Dumbledore would have looked like if he'd lived. For one thing, Aberforth's nose was straight, his glasses rectangular and smudged, his robes plain and gray. For another, there was a sort of gnarled, walnut-like quality to his hands and face that, together with the pub, Draco attributed to manual labor, and he couldn't imagine Albus Dumbledore doing manual labor to save his life. "I don't blame you for it," he said. "Didn't blame you when it happened. I knew my brother, and he could have put a stop to it if he liked."

"Yes," said Draco. "He could have, but he had other plans and--he gave me a chance." He hadn't been expecting that. Dumbledore had so long been held up as the enemy, as the embodiment of everything wrong with the wizarding world, that Draco hadn't expected it to not be a fight. He hadn't expected Dumbledore to calmly advise him against it--to talk about it like he understood, when for the last six years Draco would have thought Dumbledore would be the last person to understand what anyone was going through, or to be paying attention to anyone but precious Potter. He took a drink, shook his head. "Not that I did that much with the chance. I didn't descend into evil, but I've hardly spent the rest of my life fighting it."

Aberforth sighed and must have summoned a stool or something, because he sat behind the bar. "He didn't do the best job of fighting it himself. And he might have said that moving on from your mistakes was doing the best you could with that chance."

Draco looked up, hopeful. 

"Of course, he was a damn fool."

He wondered, by now, why he wasn't used to having his hopes dashed. "You sound like my father," he said lightly, "although even my father stopped saying Dumbledore was a fool when he learned he'd saved my life."

"Saved your life, sure. All that year, never reported you to the Aurors, never sent you to Azkaban, never forced the issue. Was willing to put his life in your hands all to help you figure out what he could have used himself at eighteen, that Dark Lords don't have friends."

Draco looked at his glass and didn't say anything. He knew that the trap was about to spring, and also the way Aberforth put it--Dark Lords don't have friends--brought back too many uncomfortable memories, sad and shameful things from his youth he couldn't figure out the words for. 

"And that would have been lovely and noble, if it had just been the two of you."

If someone had told Draco Malfoy, age eleven and three months, that one day he would almost kill Ron Weasley and be more upset about the kill part than the almost, he would have thought them insane. His stomach twisted with guilt, and it was made worse by the fact that he couldn't recall the other student's name. She'd been on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time, she'd nearly died. "And it wasn't."

Aberforth snorted. "It certainly was not. Wasn't the first time my brother let himself get wrapped up in personal drama at the expense of innocent bystanders. Was the last."

"I just wanted to apologize," he said, and it came out less angry and more petulant than he intended.

Aberforth sighed. "I'm not angry at you. Well, I am, a little, for reminding me of him. He might've been under a curse, but to decide to die like that, to not even fight--"

Draco knocked back the drink. "Would you be so kind as to show me to my room?"

-

There was no miraculous recovery that summer. He left to pick up Scorpius from the station to the sound of Astoria and Waller arguing. Her voice was high-pitched and breathless with pain. They did this more and more often, Waller accusing Astoria of not trying, Astoria snapping back that he had no idea, and Draco thinking, she's fighting, she's fighting, and wishing Waller would leave her alone so she could concentrate on fighting the curse. 

"I'll leave when she tells me to," said Waller grimly, one afternoon in June. "You don't make her do her exercises, and you let her take all the pain potions she wants. And I know--I know why you do it, but I'm a Healer. Being cruel is regrettably part of the job."

"Please don't tell me you're being cruel to my wife."

Waller sighed and adjusted his glasses. "I wish I didn't have to."

She was sleeping when they came back, and Draco tried not to notice how crestfallen Scorpius looked. "She had a bad day yesterday," Draco said, and it was true, but it also wasn't any worse than the days usually were. "If you'd like, we can go flying after you put your things away."

"No thanks," said Scorpius. "I have this book on the Goblin wars--I'm four chapters from the end--"

"I understand," said Draco. It hurt, it hurt to know his son was hurting. He wanted to go to him, to give him a hug, to reassure him. But in the instant he'd decided, Scorpius had already started to move, and was no longer standing there, small and pale and fragile. 

Draco kept resolving that he would talk to his son one day. He would tell him about the time and the treatments and how it was all worth it, how no matter what happened, Scorpius will always have been worth it. That he loved his son, that he was proud of him, even if he didn't say it enough. That he wished he could wrap Scorpius in a protective spell where nothing could ever hurt him again, that if anything did, it would be as easy to fix as charming his skinned knees whole again. 

He hadn't been able to talk to Scorpius like that in ages, though. Part of it was his own upbringing--the last time his own father hugged him was in the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts, when he'd been half-convinced Draco was dead and so relieved to discover he was not--and part of it was the rift that opened between them when Scorpius found out he'd been a Death Eater. He wouldn't flatter himself to say he'd been Scorpius's favorite parent before that, but afterwards his son had favored Astoria, and looked at Draco sometimes as if to ask who was he, really, and would this person he'd thought he knew betray him again? Was he a monster in disguise? And so Draco just let him stay away. Let them grow further and further apart, until the silence seemed insurmountable. 

If there was ever a time he should talk to his son, it was now, but his family felt like the Vanishing Cabinet once had: finicky and fragile and unfixable, and so he let the silence stretch on for two months. When Astoria was awake, they talked to her. Scorpius sometimes just brought a book in and read, and she made herself comfortable against the pillows and smiled. She could get into a chair, occasionally, and when the weather was nice they sat outside. Sometimes the silence then was soothing, peaceful: they were there, and they were together. Astoria wore a huge floppy hat to protect from sunburn and the first time Scorpius saw her in it, he was so startled he laughed, and then she laughed too, and they were both laughing hysterically when she started to choke on air. 

When she was asleep, they sat with her too. Scorpius read in a whisper until he's hoarse--eight, nine, ten years ago she was reading to him, she and Draco would take turns on voices. Draco just sat at her side and held her hand. Sometimes he fell asleep like that. 

One night, towards the end of August, he did just that, and woke on some unspoken cue. Astoria's wand, which had lain on her bedside table for months now, was in her hand. She was muttering a spell under her breath, and he could hear the pain it was causing her, and the frustration that it wasn't working. 

The drawer was juddering open. A small vial rose slowly, jerkily out, high enough to catch the candlelight, and then fell back down.

Astoria let out a little cry and her fingers squeezed around her wand. 

"You should have asked me," said Draco, muddled enough to think she was reaching for a pain potion--but there were two flasks on the table still, and he didn't realize his mistake until after the vial floated into his hand. It didn't look like any of the pain potions she'd been taking, didn't look like any pain potion he'd ever heard of. And as the light hit it and he watched bubbles slowly shift inside it, watched the pale green liquid crawl along the glass like it had a will of its own, he recognized it, from a description he'd read long ago. Read long ago when he was trying to kill Dumbledore, in a book of poisons. If he uncorked it now, he thought, he'd smell its characteristic scent of apples, smoke, and something else, he couldn't remember the last one. 

He could remember that it was fast-acting, and that there was no antidote. He was almost tempted to brew it for Dumbledore because of that, and not because supposedly it wasn't painful, supposedly it was peaceful. It shared some of the ingredients with the draught for dreamless sleep, but it took a considerably longer time to brew, and ingredients he didn't have access to, so in the end he chose another poison. 

He didn't know what his face looked like, but he did know that she knew he knew, because she let her hand fall to the bedcovers and looked away. 

"I'm not going to make it to the Christmas holidays," she said. "And Scorpius would take it badly if I died while he was at school."

It fell into place: she'd seem to be doing better, there would be a good day where she made a point of telling Scorpius how proud she was of him, she'd kiss Draco good night, and then the next morning she'd have gotten much worse--exhausting herself with the attempts at magic--and when she recovered a little from that, she had one of her screaming arguments with Waller. "Did you ask your parents for this?" he said, but no, he didn't like his parents-in-law, but they were parents. "Your sister?"

"I bought it myself." And before he could ask when, because it wasn't something you could owl order and she hadn't exactly been up to leaving the house this last year, "You and Scorpius were in Ollivander's. I figured that would give me more than enough time."

He felt numb, and paralyzed, and kept stroking the glass with his thumb as if to prove to himself he was neither. "Ollivander's." It was a good choice, a devious choice. He'd been too uncomfortable about his family having held the man captive--and then the way a wand, elder wood and Phoenix feather, had finally responded to Scorpius, and his insistence that Scorpius get a second one, because he was not sending his son to school with an elder wand--to have noticed if she was late, to have inquired too closely about what she'd been doing. 

Two years, he thought. She'd been sick on and off for ages, but it had never been bad, or lasted long, until the winter before last. But she'd started making preparations before Scorpius even went to school. 

"Was it really that bad?" he asked. He took her hand in his. He would have expected to be angry, but mostly he just hurt. 

"Of course it wasn't. But I knew that when I needed it, i wouldn't be able to get it, and I didn't want--I didn't want to ask you."

To buy it, to brew it, to hand the vial over to her now. Her eyes were redder than normal. "Waller agreed to vanish the vial."

"But not to hand it to you or open it."

"Regulations," said Astoria. "Also, I think he's scared."

Maybe he just didn't want you to die, Draco did not say. He knew the limits of his wheedling abilities: he could make her feel guilty, but he couldn't change her mind. Two years, he thought. To be planning this. "It's only the twenty-fourth."

She started crying, and it was as though now his tears had permission, because suddenly they arrived in a flood. He hadn't meant to, but--there was still one week left before Scorpius had to return to school. He wanted more time with her. He wanted to never let her go. And even if all summer she'd been trying, even if he could see wanting what was best for Scorpius, even if he already felt bereft as well as betrayed, he would give his wand arm for one more week with her. 

He was selfish, and he was scared. 

They cried together. Astoria ran out of tears first, and Draco reflexively went to wipe her face, only his free hand was the one with the poison in it. 

He pulled it back. 

"You were never meant to know," she said, her voice thick, her eyelids swollen. She gripped his hand with a strength she hadn't had all summer, and it hurt and he never wanted her to stop. 

"I know." He put the vial on the bed, leaned back over to wipe her face and kiss her forehead. If she still had had hair he'd smooth it back, but she didn't, and right now it was hard for him to remember a time when she did. He kissed her lips, and she kissed him back, hungrily. "If you are going to," he said. "If you are going to, I'd like to stay."

She held his gaze. He thought for a second that maybe she wouldn't, tonight. That she'd wait until it was closer to Scorpius's return to Hogwarts. 

Then she let go of his hand for as long as it took to pull the cork out. Her arms barely had enough strength to bring the vial to her lips, but they had enough. 

She took his hand again. "It's supposed to be painless."

"I know."

"That'll be nice," she said. "Painless." She yawned, and he knew it wasn't the poison, it didn't act that fast. She had just exhausted herself, with magic, with the simple movements of lifting her wand. "I'm glad you're here with me."

"I love you." Draco wasn't particularly good with expressing his feelings, but he always wanted to tell her that, and now it felt like he hadn't nearly often enough. 

"I know," she said drowsily, and then, "Love you too." 

He stayed with her until she fell asleep. He stayed with her until she stopped breathing. He stayed with her until Waller came in to administer her early morning potions, stopped, collected himself, and vanished the vial where it was held loosely in Astoria's left hand. 

And then he went to wake Scorpius.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for assisted suicide.


End file.
